


Fata Morgana

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Disguise, Gen, Meta, Post-Movie, Spies & Secret Agents, tradecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:29:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27036475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: The gang's days of being myths are over unless they up their game. Hence Copley's tradecraft lessons.(Less a story than a diegetic meta.)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 126





	Fata Morgana

Copley tells them that their future must now involve masks and prosthetics and hair dye and wigs and gloves and all of the other kinds of masquerade tools that Nile frankly takes for granted as obvious and is a little gobsmacked that the others are willing to fight him on the necessity of it.

"You live in a world of CCTV, fingerprint databases, and facial recognition software," he tells them not for the first or fifth time. "Every country that has a useful passport has that passport embedded with an RFID chip. Even the so-called liberal democracies have files on all of their citizens, let alone the places like China that know more about a resident than that resident knows about themselves.

"You don't get to live off the radar anymore. I found you and, frankly, it wasn't that hard with current technology. Your work tends to piss off those with access to power, money, and good IT support. You want to do what you do, you have to do it within the system, flying false flags and changing identities far more often than once a generation or once a century. I can't rake the sand behind your footsteps if you don't."

And so in the year 2019, a couple of Crusaders and a woman older than dirt learn the fine arts of tradecraft. Nile, a Millennial with decades of pop culture and social media under her belt, is as much spectator as participant. She's got the concepts down cold, although Copley often gets as frustrated with her for thinking real life works like the movies do as he does with the others for acting their ages. He tells Andy, who announces that she doesn't have to bother with any of this shit because she's on a timer now, that unless she plans on stop working in the next five years, she is a fool and an idiot and will find herself in someone's black site prison spending the remainder of her days getting tortured for information she doesn't have.

"Contra _The Guardian_ , the Americans don't have a monopoly on rendition and other dirty deeds in the dark," he tells her. "They're actually more civilized about it than most because they think they're doing God's work and are the beacons of liberty and justice. The godless Europeans? The actual theocracies? The neo-fascist revanchist empires you'll all recall so well from their first incarnations? You have no idea what they're capable of. They, like you, have a cultural memory that goes back millennia. But unlike you they've modernized it. They remember the same lack of mercy that you do but have turned it into functional paperwork so they don't feel it at all when they hurt you. How much pain do you want to be in when you die?"

And so they learn how to subtly change their noses with bits of latex or clay - Nicky is adorably unhappy with every possible option to change his shnozz and Joe makes things both better and worse by telling him he is beautiful no matter what and then busting out laughing when he sees the results. There is a two-day seminar on colored contacts that was supposed to be one day but none of them can figure out how to put the lenses in on the first day and Nile isn't excused from it despite the fact that black people her shade don't have blue or green eyes.

"They do, although it's rare and mostly outside the US," Copley tells her. "But apart from a convoluted cover story involving sub-Saharan African tribes, there will in fact be times when you will need to stand out and be striking. Either to confuse recognition software or simply to draw attention away from something else. Or some _one_ else. If the only thing the survivors - or your opponents - remember is a black woman with purple eyes, then your team has gotten away safely."

Which is something to think about, Nile supposes. But it's a weird way of thinking that she knows Copley understands. She has had to be aware of her blackness making her noticeable, making her a target, for a long time in a way that being a woman makes both better and far, far worse. Fitting in has been a safety thing, be it on the street as a civilian or within the Marine Corps where conformity is prized almost above everything. Hide your skin, hide your girly bits, hide your spark because all of that makes people notice and noticing is bad. Being unobtrusive had seemed to be a key to this new life of hers, too, judging by the others, hiding in plain sight. But here's Copley telling them to remember that that's the rule that makes the exception worth mastering. 

Contacts are a bitch and her eyes are bloodshot for a week because she keeps blinking at the wrong moment and poking herself in the eyeball. 

"Treat it like the pepper spray test," Copley tells her. "Brace, endure, rinse your eyes out afterward." 

There are lectures on wardrobing to hide their physiques and show them off and why they need to start differently using the knowledge they have about local dress and customs. There are long talks on when they will need to look like locals and when they will need to look like tourists and why they can't wear whatever they want and this is where Nile is both fascinated and frustrated. She's spent the last eight years in USMC uniforms with her hair in USMC-approved styles and her makeup and jewelry all dictated by the Corps and she's very chill about the idea of dressing for work, but the others are not to a degree that's kinda funny. Andy, Nicky, and Joe are indignant at fashion history lessons when they lived through the eras ("You were alive at the time, that's not the same thing") and have gotten really stubborn about dressing how they like instead of how they need to after a relatively tiny amount of time being able to do just that.

They also have long arguments about old weapons, but Copley clearly went into this understanding that the labrys, longsword, and scimitar were not going into permanent storage. 

"Rotate your arsenals is all I'm saying," he repeats for the fiftieth time because of course 'give it all up' was what the others had heard. "You have centuries' worth of obsolete weaponry lying around in your safehouses to choose from if you want to be traditionalists, but don't make that your calling card or everything else is for nothing. Don't take the antiques on every mission - use shorter swords or different blades once in a while, use a modern fighting knife, pick up an axe from the hardware store. You are all competent in _so many_ different weapons and it would be good for you to remember how lethal you all are with more than what you're most comfortable with. Look at it as a challenge if you need to."

Nile takes notes on all of this stuff, including what the guys need to do not only because she can tell that Joe and Nicky are doing the selective hearing thing, but also because someone's going to have to pass this on to Booker and it's not stuff that can wait a hundred years. He might not be running into danger in far-flung parts of the world, but he's living in Paris and that's just as dangerous according to Copley. Probably more. She knows Copley can find Booker and tell all of this himself, but she doesn't think he will. Not out of guilt or malevolence or whatever it is that tied the two of them together so that Copley could turn Booker like he did, just... Booker's off the chessboard as far as Copley goes. As far as the others go, perhaps. But he's still out there and Nile doesn't want him in trouble because he's been on CCTV too many times.

Turns out that CCTV is not the weird surveillance vision they have to worry about. Booker dreams of Paris and Nile dreams of Chicago and Quynh went with the easier choice.


End file.
